Quintiles chief operating officer has resigned

The president and chief operating officer of Durham-based Quintiles Transnational Holdings Inc. has resigned, the company announced Thursday.

John Ratliff will step down Dec. 31. He also resigned from the company’s board.

He is not immediately taking a job at another company, based on comments he made to Quintiles officials, Phil Bridges, a spokesman for Quintiles, said in an email.

“This was a personal decision for John, and we wish him well,” Bridges said.

Ratliff’s management responsibilities will be assumed by other company executives, according to Bridges.

Ratliff first joined Quintiles as chief financial officer in 2004, after the company was taken private again in 2003.

“Over the decade we were private, John provided great leadership,” Quintiles CEO Tom Pike said in a conference call Thursday. The call was held to discuss the company’s third-quarter financial results.

In 2006, Ratliff was named chief operating officer of the company, and was appointed to Quintiles’ board.

Prior to working at the Durham-based company, he worked at Acterna, a provider of communications testing equipment and software used by telecommunications and cable network operators. Acterna was acquired by another company in 2005.

Prior to that, he had worked for 19 years at IBM Corp, including as vice president for finance and planning for Latin America.
Quintiles, a biopharmaceutical services company, has a network of more than 28,000 employees who work out of about 100 countries.